FORTUNY a family story

Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia Management Committee President Mariacristina Gribaudi Vice-president Luigi Brugnaro Members Bruno Bernardi Lorenza Lain Roberto Zuccato Director Gabriella Belli Executive Secretary Mattia Agnetti Museum Managers Daniela Ferretti (Museum Area 3) Chiara Squarcina (Museum Area 2) Palazzo Fortuny Daniela Ferretti Exhibition Curated by Daniela Ferretti

with Cristina Da Roit Exhibition Design

Daniela Ferretti

“Homage to Fortuny” Wabi Space Design

Axel Vervoordt Tatsuro Miki Technical Coordination Francesca Boni Georg Malfertheiner Organisation Tiziana Alvisi Garance Laporte in collaboration with

Dario Dalla Lana

Exhibition Office and Registrar

Giulia Biscontin Sofia Rinaldi Silvia Toffano Monica Vianello

Communication, Press and Strategic Development

Mara Vittori

with Andrea Marin

Chiara Marusso Silvia Negretti Alessandro Paolinelli Giulia Sabattini

Valentina Avon, Press Officer Educational Services

Monica da Cortà Fumei

with Riccardo Bon

Claudia Calabresi Cristina Gazzola Chiara Miotto

Security and Logistics

Lorenzo Palmisano

with Valeria Fedrigo

Administration

Maria Cristina Carraro

with Leonardo Babbo

Piero Calore Ludovica Fanti Laura Miccoli Elena Roccato Francesca Rodella Paola Vinaccia Photographic Archives of Palazzo Fortuny Cristina Da Roit Marcello Venturini Condition Reports Marianna Fonzo Mariella Gnani

Exhibition Graphic Design

Tomomot

Catalogue

Edited by

Daniela Ferretti

with Cristina Da Roit Texts by

Javier Barón Paolo Bolpagni Ilaria Caloi Emiliano Cano Díaz Cristina Da Roit Dario Dalla Lana Doretta Davanzo Poli Daniela Ferretti Claudio Franzini Silvio Fuso Sophie Grossiord Ana Gutiérrez Márquez Marzia Maino Sergio Polano Giandomenico Romanelli Chiara Squarcina Rosa Vives Cecilia Zanin Editorial Coordination Davide Daninos Massimo Zanella Copy Editing Valentina Rossini Translations Kieren Bailey Lucian Comoy Ottavio Janni Luisa Sanjust Graphic Design Tomomot

The sound composition “Blue Veil” was created in tribute to Fortuny by

Mireille Capelle

Exhibition produced and organised by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia in collaboration with the Axel & May Vervoordt Foundation

FORTUNY

Lenders

Archivio Eleonora Duse, Istituto per il teatro e il melodramma, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice Fondazione di Venezia Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres

Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna di Ca’ Pesaro, Venice Museo Correr, Venice Museo del Vetro, Murano Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

National Collection of Qatar, Doha

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow Ville de Castres - Musée Goya, Musée d’art hispanique, Castres

Our thanks also to

Emanuela Carpani Soprintendente

Soprintendenza Archeologia, belle arti e paesaggio per il Comune di Venezia e Laguna

Devis Valenti Direttore

Ufficio Esportazione Soprintendenza Archeologia, belle arti e paesaggio per il Comune di Venezia e Laguna

Antonio Andrea Borgesi Vice-direttore

Ufficio Esportazioni Soprintendenza Archeologia, belle arti e paesaggio per il Comune di Venezia e Laguna

Gino Famiglietti Direttore Generale Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo

Direzione Generale Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio

Servizio IV - Circolazione Luciano Maria Provenzano Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo

Direzione Generale Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio Servizio IV - Circolazione And also Elisabetta Barisoni Andrea Bellieni Dennis Cecchin Matteo Piccolo Cristiano Sant Chiara Squarcina Mauro Stocco

Our thanks for their collaboration to Patricio Barbirotto Claudio Bertani Franca Crosato Monica Minghetti Special thanks to Michael Gardner Koen Kessels Marisa Oropesa Technical support ERCO Gerstenmaier Collection, Madrid

Vida Muñoz Collection, Almería

Venetia Studium Srl Melody Cohen Collection Janet Cramer Family Collection

Liselotte Höhs Collection Marielle Labèque Collection May Vervoordt Collection

We wish to thank the Lenders who have preferred to remain anonymous.

Palazzo Fortuny, Venice

With the exhibition Fortuny. A Family Story we are paying tribute to a

dy-nasty and to events that seem to have dropped straight out of the pages of a novel: a young man of humble origins makes a name for himself thanks solely to the ingenuity and perseverance with which he cultivates his talent as a painter.

As an adult, Mariano Fortuny y Marsal is welcomed into the most important family of Spanish painters of his time by marrying Cecilia de Madrazo; he achieves success in nineteenth-century Europe, where he be-comes one of the most sought-after and highly-paid painters of his time. But he dies at a very young age, when his second-born son is only three years old. This son would prove to be an heir worthy of his father’s artistic legacy, thanks in part to the culturally stimulating environment he grew up in; indeed, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo’s maternal grandfather and uncles were successful artists and within this milieu, Mariano would de-veloped multiple talents and a unique personality.

Finally, an exhibition showcasing this family story and European saga encompassing Barcelona, Rome, Madrid, Granada, Paris and Venice, in the very building, Palazzo Fortuny, which preserves a wealth of symbols, ideas, grandeur, images and stories that are unmatched anywhere in the world – and that continue to live here.

I would like to thank the Axel & May Vervoordt Foundation that pro-vided generous support for carrying out this important project.

Mariacristina Gribaudi

Defined by many as the Leonardo da Vinci of the twentieth century, Mariano Fortuny breathed and fed on art even before he was born. This exhibition aims to pay tribute to his boundless creativity by highlighting both the family context in which he grew up and the passion for collect-ing art that distcollect-inguished the Fortuny and Madrazo families.

A representative part of the heterogeneous collections has been reu-nited following the dispersals that succeeded each other over a period of less than a century: the works were sometimes sold out of necessity, but in many cases were also generously donated to European museums and public institutions.

Putting together an exhibition project is a laborious and complex busi-ness, requiring constant attention and care, in order to arrive at comple-tion. The variables that determine the final outcome are endless, involv-ing many organisational aspects; they are not always positive, but thanks to a passionate working group all difficulties and moments of desponden-cy have been overcome.

I express my gratitude to Cristina Da Roit, who shared the curatorship of the exhibition and the editing of the catalogue with me. A sincere thanks to Javier Barón for the fundamental advice and support he has given to the project.

I thank Tiziana Alvisi and Garance Laporte, who, with Dario Dalla Lana, managed the delicate organisational phases with determination and with proven professionalism.

Thanks also to Francesca Boni, Georg Malfertheiner, Silvia Toffano and Marcello Venturini for their collaboration.

I am particularly grateful to the directors Miguel Falomir Faus of the Museo del Prado, Mikhail Piotrowsky of the State Hermitage Museum, Marina Loshak of the Pushkin Museum, HE Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani of the Museums of Qatar, Jean-Louis Augé of the Musée Goya, Montse Aguer of the Dalí Museums, for granting very important loans.

My personal thanks to the Vida Muñoz family, which has supported and shared our project.

My thanks also to all those collectors who with their loans have brought precious garments made in the Fortuny workshops to the Palazzo.

The architecture of Palazzo Fortuny inspired Mireille Capelle’s sound composition “Blue Veil”: my thanks go also to her.

My heartfelt gratitude goes to the authors of the essays that enrich the fine volume accompanying the exhibition and to Davide Daninos, Massimo Zanella, Valentina Rossini and the Tomomot Studio who have produced it with dedication and competence.

And finally, my thanks to you Axel: your sensitivity and your precious friendship have once again been fundamental for the realisation of this tribute to “our” Fortuny.

Daniela Ferretti

12

— Fortuny. A Family

Story

Daniela Ferretti

Family Album

22

— A Painter of Such

Originality He Arouses

Wonder. Mariano

Fortuny y Marsal:

A Brief Biography

Dario Dalla lana 32

— The Painter’s Son

in a Venetian Room:

Biography of Mariano

Fortuny y Madrazo

ClauDio Franzini

Characters and Actors

54

— Mariano Fortuny y

Marsal Beyond Virtuosity

Javier Barón

86

— Cecilia de Madrazo

and Her Artistic and

Affective Environment

ana Gutiérrez Márquez 96

— The Discovery of

Venice by the Fortunys

(1873–1889)

eMiliano Cano Díaz 112

— Mariano Fortuny:

The Thousand Faces

of a Brilliant Amateur

GianDoMeniCo roManelli 138

— Henriette Fortuny:

Portrait of a Muse

Daniela Ferretti

Painting, Drawing

and Etching

154

— Nature and

Landscapes

192

— Travel Notes

230

— Studies

274

— Figure Drawings

292

— Old Masters Copies

308

— Etchings

346

— The Fortunys:

In Praise of Etching

rosa vives

Collecting

356

— Disjecta Membra:

The Fortuny’s Collections

ClauDio Franzini 374

— The Textiles

Collection

Doretta Davanzo Poli 386

— The Glass Artwork

in the Fortuny Collection

Chiara squarCina

396

— The Universal Artist

and His Sources

Daniela Ferretti, axel vervoorDt

Atelier Fortuny

416

— Mariano Fortuny y

Madrazo: A Wagnerian

Artist

Paolo BolPaGni 440

— With the Eyes of

Light: Thoughts on

Mariano Fortuny y

Madrazo’s Theatre Poetics

Marzia Maino

454

— The Art of Printed

Fabric

Cristina Da roit

472

— At Last I Have My

Dress!

soPhie GrossiorD

486

— The Knossos Scarves:

Minoan Inspiration and

Oriental Fascination

ilaria Caloi

492

— Fortuny and the

Applied Arts

serGio Polano

502

— The Art of Photography

silvio Fuso

516

— The Tempera Paints

of Palazzo Pesaro degli

Orfei: The History and

Techniques of a Medium

Blending Modernity

and Tradition

CeCilia zanin 522

— Theatre of Images

Appendices

538

— List of Works

554

— Bibliography

Ilaria Caloi

The Knossos

Scarves: Minoan

Inspiration and

487 atelier fortuny

he Knossos scarf created by Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo in 1906 is a large silk taffeta garment, rectangular in form (4 × 1 m), printed with a variety of coloured motifs in-spired by Minoan Crete. These decorative elements were reproduced in the academic books and journals written by those ar-chaeologists of various nationalities who, at the beginning of the twen-tieth century, were bringing to light the Minoan civilisation.1

The notebooks still preserved in the Museo Fortuny in Venice are of considerable importance, as they enable us to admire the sketches of Minoan motifs that Fortuny meticulously copied from vases and

larnakes published in The Prehistoric Tombs of Knossos (1906) by Arthur

Evans, who excavated the Palace of Knossos.2 Furthermore, in the note-book entitled Descriptions et Illustrations, Fortuny reports that the book

by Angelo Mosso, Escursioni nel Mediterraneo e gli scavi di Creta (1907),3

was also a source of inspiration for his scarves, which he himself called Knossos scarves because they were decorated with “fiori e alghe che avvolgono i vasi molto antichi trovati nell’isola di Candia”.

For his Knossos scarves, Fortuny used abstract, floral, and marine Minoan motifs, which reflected the fascination of the early twenti-eth-century Art Nouveau artists with natural world in all its forms. The paradoxical analogies between Minoan art and Art Nouveau indeed stimulated Fortuny and other contemporary artists to adopt Cretan decorations to produce modern creations.

The modernity that the archaeologists found in the elaborate deco-ration of Minoan artefacts was also recognised in depictions of women in Cretan frescoes and figurines. In 1902, the art historian and critic Edmond Pottier commented on the woman portrayed in the fresco at Knossos, whom he dubbed La Parisienne, as follows: “un mélange

d’ar-chaïsme naïf et de modernisme pimenté”.4 This feminine figure, with her pronounced eroticism, as indicated by her exposed breasts, reflect-ed the concept of modern woman elaboratreflect-ed in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe, which in some way coincided with the image that Europeans had of Oriental women: a mixture of spiritual-ity and seduction, of mysticism and sensualspiritual-ity.

The Fortuny’s creation of the Knossos scarf follows this Zeitgeist,

both in the use of Minoan motifs recalling Art Nouveau decorations, and in the choice of the model, much influenced by the fascination of the time with the Oriental fashion.

The choice to produce large and multi-purpose scarves reflects the fascination with Oriental veils and cloaks shared by many contempo-rary artists. Fortuny’s interest in Oriental clothes is well-known: he not only increased his already rich father’s collection of mostly Arabic cos-tumes with Moroccan, Japanese and generically Oriental clothes, but also transformed these garments into a fundamental source of inspira-tion and imitainspira-tion for his textile producinspira-tions. Examples are represent-ed by his creations of Japanese kimonos, Arabic abayas and burnouses, as well as Turkish dolmans.

The Knossos scarves are also reminiscent of the large silk veils used by the American pioneers of modern dance who were performing at that time in Berlin and Paris, such as Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis

the Knossos scarves

488

437. Unknown

The Dancer Ruth St. Denis Wearing a Knossos Scarf, 1907

489 atelier fortuny

438. Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo

Henriette Wearing a Knossos Scarf, circa 1910

Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Fondo Mariutti-Fortuny

491 atelier fortuny

439. Manifattura Fortuny

Knossos Scarf, circa 1910

Private collection

Minoan motifs used by Fortuny to print his Knossos scarves and Loïe Fuller. It is therefore no coincidence that Fortuny chose Ruth

St. Denis to wear his Knossos scarves during their official presentation in Berlin in 1907.5 The dancer, considered the responsible for the intro-duction of orientalism into modern dance in Europe, found in the East new responses for her needs, namely the exaltation of a ritual, at once mystical and sensual. Her Oriental dances in which she interpreted fe-male figures such as the goddess Egypta or the Indian princess Radha, were particularly famous in Germany.

Hence, the Knossos scarf worn by Ruth St. Denis seems to represent the interpretation that Fortuny offered not only of Minoan art, but especially of the Minoan woman. To present his Knossos scarves, he chose an “oriental” woman able to symbolise a modern blend of spirit-uality and seduction.

There is no doubt that the Fortuny’s fascination with the Oriental world was inherited from his father, but in him it emerges from an en-tirely twentieth-century stance. First of all, it appears to be filtered by the Minoan culture to which the artist so much – and intentionally – turned for his creations from the outset of their production; secondly, his Knossos scarves represent all the revolutions that he experienced at the turn of the twentieth century, such as the reforms of theatre, costume and dance. He not only created an innovative model in terms of form and decoration, but also conceived a new and modern way of dressing the twentieth century European women, following a double thread: the inspiration from the ancient Mediterranean world, here represented by the Minoan culture of Crete, and the fascination with the Oriental world, in its broadest sense.

1 Cf. Caloi 2011. 2 Evans 1906. 3 Mosso 1907.

4 Pottier 1902, pp. 81–94. 5 Cf. Caloi 2016, pp. 71–83.